Break In (Season 1, Episode 8)
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Hi, Jennifer Simard. Hi, Patrick. Oh, my goodness. How are you doing, girl? I'm great. It's a rainy day here in Manhattan. It is. It's rainy. And windy. That's always Umbrella Graveyard on days like this in Manhattan. Cheesecakes. If you don't know this, people in New York buy umbrellas per storm. Yeah, it's like a $2 umbrella. Yep. You never bring one with you. You just end up running into whatever little bodega you're next to when it starts to storm here. And it has the strength of tissue paper. I know.

And you just see them in every sidewalk, you know, garbage pail. And it's just like, in the arms of an angel. And they're like, they're such bad quality. They should be $2, but they're actually $30. Well, yes, they have gone up in price because they know. They know.

I know. Well, Cheesecakes, welcome to the Golden Girls Deep Dive podcast. Can we tell them what this is, what they can expect from us? What if I said no? You know what? Then we would just move right on. Okay. Well, I think you should tell them. All right. Well, here on the Golden Girls Deep Dive podcast, each week we recap an episode.

of the Golden Girls going in order from the pilot. And throughout, we sprinkle in little deep dives on things. We've got a researcher named Jess, who his full-time job is like doing research on these episodes and the Golden Girls universe. So then at the end of the episode, after the recap is finished and the hilarity has been had,

One of us, you or I, will do a deep dive specifically on something from the Golden Girls universe. That's right. So it's a recap with little deep dives and then like a recap recap to send us home. Yep. Almost bushes, sous-sons here and there. Oh, Cheesecakes, before we get into it, I got to remind you, please join the Facebook group. It's the Golden Girls Deep Dive Podcast Discussion Group. Tell them how fun it is. It is so fun.

so much fun because not only are we talking about stuff from the show and I'm so impressed with how on point they are all of our listeners are the cheesecakes are finding things little detectives all of you are in addition to that we just post about our lives and it's so fun it's just a great place imagine a place where you can go on the internet where you just get to talk about the golden girls but also like your dogs and your lives and your spouses and your kids yeah you know what I mean and if

feel safe which is a big deal for me yeah me too i'm glad you feel safe in there mother cheesecake thank you papa cheesecake all right girl which episode are we talking about today patrick and cheesecakes this is episode 8 break-in it aired november 9th 1985 it was written by susan harris who was the creator of the show of course and directed by paul bogart so we do that thing at the

the top of the show where we talk about like what's going on in the world at the time. So three days from the airing of this episode, so that would be Monday, November 11th, 1985, something major is going to happen. On NBC, the first ever movie dealing with the AIDS epidemic is going to premiere. It's called An Early Frost. It stars Aidan Quinn, Gina Rowlands, and Ben Gazzara. Aidan Quinn,

Quinn, who, like, becomes famous, like, in the 90s and early 2000s. Those icy blue eyes. Icy blue eyes. He plays a lawyer in, like, early 1980s who is a gay man living in the closet and discovers that he has AIDS and has to, like, move home and, like, both come out to his family and tell them that he has AIDS. And I was gonna just do a mini deep dive on it here because I thought it was interesting, but then the more I looked into it, the more I was like, this deserves its own deep dive. And I think...

I think because it aired on NBC, which is the Golden Girls Network, and it premiered just a couple weeks after the Golden Girls premiered, I feel like that counts as being in the Golden Girls universe. Yes, and all of our lead actresses in the show were such supporters of the gay community. This show became a beloved child of the gay community. Yes, and they all became...

AIDS activists. It's no coincidence. I don't think that the AIDS epidemic was really billowing up right as the show came out and was gaining popularity. So that is going to be the deep dive at the end of this episode. Instead of doing a mini deep dive here, I'm going to do like a longer deep dive today at the end of the ep. I got to tell you, I watched the whole movie today. It's really freaking good. And it had me in tears. You know, as you were describing who was in it, I swear I watched it in real time. You probably did. 34 million people watched it the night that it premiered. It was the highest

rated show that Monday night. It beat Monday Night Football. Well, I'm going to have to watch it again. Yes. But speaking of other things that happened on this date, Patrick, on November 9th, 1985, the New York Times ran an article that I found very interesting. And that was Ruben Hurricane Carter won his release after a wrongful conviction for murder. He'd spent nearly 20 years in prison. Wow. For a triple homicide in Patterson, New Jersey. And you should go check it out. I thought this might be if you and Jillian haven't done it. Perfect.

crossover in 2019. There was apparently a 13-part series. I think it was the BBC did it, a series called The Hurricane Tapes. Wow. Yeah, but I believe it was a whole issue of mistaken murder weapon, mistaken identity. It's really worth digging into. How long was he in prison? About 20 years. And he, wow, that is wild. Isn't that hideous? Yeah. And it was on this day, the day this episode came out, that he won his release. Well, it was the article in the New York Times. Yeah. But that was probably the day before it was sent out.

But anyway, The New York Times ran an article that day. Wow. Yeah.

All right, well, jumping in, we get the transition music right at the top. And this time, we're not seeing the exterior of the house. We're seeing like the Miami Harbor or something. Yeah, there's like two people riding on the top of a boat or something. I think it's meant to imply that the ladies have been out for a raucous night on the town. They have been. And I love that when we see them, you know, we see them coming home into Cinderblock Alley. Yeah.

They're going to let themselves in having just attended the Madonna concert. Yeah, it's so funny. The one thing I wanted to point out about this shot of them walking down Cinderblock Alley Cheesecakes, if you don't know what that is, that's what we call the area outside of their house that's like blocked off from the street because it has those horrible cinder blocks. It's a steadicam shot. So the camera operator is following them, like holding the camera down the patio. I think it's intentional because we see another shot like that later in the show.

the episode. And I think it's so that when we see it again, it's not maybe quite so shocking, even though it is still plenty shocking when we see it later. So we learned the girls have been out for a raucous night on the town. They're coming home from the Madonna concert. They were at the Virgin tour. Didn't you do a little deep dive on that? I did a

Any deep dive on the Virgin tour. So here's what we know. Madonna was sent out on tour to sort of like tour her first two albums, her self-titled album and Like a Virgin. The tour ran from April 10th to June 11th, 1985. Not a long time. In that short time, she did 40 shows in 28 cities. Oh my goodness. Isn't that wild? She was so badass. She is badass. I mean, yeah, she's such a fit bitch from the beginning. Yeah.

Such a fit bitch. Yeah. But it's only like two months. The tour garnered $3.3 million, which is $9.5 million in today money. And she was playing venues like Radio City Music Hall. That's where she played in New York City. I also wanted to point out that for the tour, Madonna is credited as creator, vocalist, and tambourine. Okay.

That's how she has those biceps. That tambourine. And the triangle. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my God. But we also learn that I love this bit of information from Jess, our researcher. This episode must have taken place on May 11th, 1985, because that was the day that The Virgin Tour played the Miami suburb of Pembroke Pines, Florida. So, like, we have an actual date that we know that in, like, that universe, this would have happened. Yeah. And I think it makes sense, too, if they filmed it six months before it aired in November. Right.

Isn't that wild? Yeah. So, like, they knew when it was going to happen or whatever. Probably. Yeah. But anyway, they come home and they're just reminiscing about the show. Well, I loved her. The name Madonna doesn't really fit her. Slut would be better. So, please. Oh, please, please. She did things on that stage I never did with my husband. So, some slut shaming right away. I know.

Some good old fashioned 1985 slut shaming. I also love the idea that these old ladies, oldest in quotes I'm saying, would have gone to a Madonna concert because you just can't imagine like Rose, Sophia, Blanche and Dorothy at like the Heiress Tour. You know what I mean? But here's the thing. My best friend in the world celebrated her sister's birthday at the Madonna concert here in New York just a few weeks ago. And they're in their late 50s. Yeah. Then I guess it makes sense. Because I don't also think of them as the

same age as, you know what I mean? 100%. Oh, also, the Virgin tour was so popular that Macy's, the department store, had an entire section dedicated to it. So you could go and get official tour merch, but you could also get like the style of clothing that Madonna wears on stage. But it was one caveat. You had to be a virgin to buy anything.

So they did make a lot of sales. Not a lot of sales. Not a lot of sales. So they're talking and, you know, Dorothy finally opens the door. Blanche flicks on the lights and the house is in disarray. It's a mess. It's a mess. And they've clearly just been robbed. And so they're all panicking. Blanche is like shushing them. She wants them to be quiet because she thinks that the robbers could still be there. But she's fully narcissistic straight off the top. She says, I've been robbed. Right.

Not, not leave. I mean, they pay her rent. Nope. She's been robbed. Okay. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it continues through the whole episode. Me, me, me, me, me, me, my, my, my, my, I, I, I, I. That is so funny. I love you for noticing that. Thank you. So here's the thing. I looked up what you're supposed to do if you come home and you've clearly been robbed because they don't do it. Right. And you have been robbed, simply safe. So. Right? Yes, I have.

I have been broken into twice while I was home in a sleep. I've never come home to having been robbed. I have been broken into twice while I was home in the apartment. Yes. That's everyone's worst nightmare. Worst nightmare. And like the worst was like the first time it happened, they only took a bank of change. Oh my gosh. A piggy bank?

Literally a piggy bank. It took us like forever. We only figured it out when neither Steve nor I could find the pants that we had laid out the night before. We're like, where are our pants? We ended up finding them on the landing on the floor above us. And that was how we knew somebody had come in. And I'll tell you, there is nothing scarier in your life ever than watching the security footage of somebody entering your apartment when you know you're in there and asleep. That's horrifying. But I also love this story because I smell a gift. It's a piggy bank. Ha!

And I can't wait to pick one out for you. You know, you're always thinking about giving things. You're such a nice, kind person. I'm very generous, Gail. So according to the internet and every website I looked at, if you ever come home and you are robbed, get the hell out of here.

hell out of there, get to a safe place, touch nothing and call the police. The Golden Girls break every single one of these rules. Every single rule. So they're, you know, they're shushing each other. Blanche is like, they could still be here. Rose innocently asks who? And Dorothy has a great joke. The Supreme Court. Who? The robbers. Anyway. But they move as a unit. A human chain. Which is in the opening credits. Is that right? Yes. There's actually five moments from this episode in the opening credits. No.

Yeah, and this is one of them. Oh, my God. Yeah, they move as a group over to the sliding door so they don't leave and get to a safe place. They don't leave, no. Then Dorothy sees the sliding door, which is where the robbers must have come in. She closes it with her bare hand. Dot, if there's one thing that we know the robbers touched, it's the door handle to this thing. Where does this sliding door go? We never see this sliding door before or again. Do they have a secret backyard that we don't know about? Because it's not to the lanai. They always go to the lanai to the left of the sliding glass doors, right? Maybe it's to Blanche's own little owner patio. No, no.

Totally. Right? Totally. I can almost imagine her saying, that's my glass door. Do I say, don't touch it? Uh-huh. Because clearly they were in her bedroom. Totally. You know? I will say this, though. Dorothy, in this entire episode, is the most assertive yet kind empath in the whole thing. Like, she's the only one. Like, call Dot. Totally. You know? Other than touching things she oughtn't. But she does say to them, like a 30-pack-a-day smoker, stay. And then we have this brilliant speech. This is a 375 Magnum.

One of the most pulled handguns in the world. It could blow your head off. The only problem is, I don't remember if I shot four rounds or five. So you have to ask yourself, do you feel lucky? Well, do you? Come on, make her day.

Which is Clint Eastwood's line from Dirty Harry. I went and watched the original clip today after watching this moment. First of all, the scene is wild. It all takes place outside of a bank or something. Yeah. Like extras everywhere. There are taxi cabs flipping over. Clint Eastwood just walking through like a boss. He says this speech so calmly. Yeah. You know what I mean? But not Rosie Dot. No.

Rosie Dot. I have to also say, Dorothy is definitely a person you want to be within a crisis. That's what I'm saying. You know what I mean? She's the only one here that I would be like, yeah, you're on my zombie apocalypse team. You're sinking cruise ship. You wish you had been on it with Dorothy. And I do like that the writers, Susan Harris and co., that they reversed a, that she has to say, because she doesn't really know, that it should be a 357 Magnum. So Sophia's over it.

Very quickly. She insists on going to her room and Rose is saying, you can't do that. It might be dangerous. And she goes, please, I'm 80. Bathtubs are dangerous. Bathtubs are dangerous and scary. They are for anybody. Have you ever slipped in a bathtub? I have. Of course I have. There is nothing more humiliating than being chubby, soaking wet, and leaning for a towel only...

To fall through the curtain. Right. Grab for the rod and have the rod fall down. I know. You bang your face on the sink because you can't afford an apartment that's big enough to not have the sink next to the toilet, next to the shower. I'm laughing not only at you, but at the third thing I thought you were going to say was there's nothing more embarrassing than being chubby, soaking wet, and pink. That's so funny.

I mean, and the other thing too is that this has happened to me not once, not twice, but thrice. I have slipped in the shower and fallen out on my chubby face.

At least. And you're wet and now you're cold and you're probably bleeding. Oh, God. Well, listen, getting out of that situation alive is a win. People die like that. That's what we should deep dive. How many people die? Totally. Going for the towel bar. Oh, my God. You know, Dorothy says this is all ridiculous. The robbers aren't here anymore. Let's go check our rooms. Right. And I'm thinking, why is nobody calling the police? The phone is right there. The front door. Let me touch another doorknob. Hold on.

She's just walking around feeling the doorknobs. And then, of course, we have the first reverence to your favorite item, Patrick. Blanche says, oh, I just thank God they didn't take my Chinese vase. Ever since seeing the Golden Girls in its original run and knowing what's going to happen in this episode, before you get to this episode, you can't unsee that horrendous eyesore. It's just huge. I made the joke before Sophia does. She's like, thank God they didn't take my Chinese vase. I'm like, honestly, who A, could they lift it? That thing looks like it weighs 800 pounds. True.

I didn't think about that. Who would want it? I know, I know. The only thing heavier in this episode is the chubby gay guy in the bathroom. Right, plus as we've said, we believe it houses Coco's ashes. 100%. So, you know. Totally. Who's going to want those? Blanche runs off to check the kitchen. Rose is afraid to be left alone. This is where we start to see Rose starting to crumble apart.

under the anxiety of what they've just been through. Yeah, it's some foreshadowing about, you know, the fear that's yet to come. I also have to point out that no one in real life wears their sweaters like they have her dressed in this, gently perched on the shoulders. That's such an actor thing. It is. And, like, the costume people have to pin that to the back of her shirt. There's no way that stays on. She just looks prettier just draped. I know. You know? There's a lot in, like, those 80s movies, like the douchey guys who, like, play polo or whatever. Yes, with a tie around the neck. Who does?

Who does that? I know. And I love your perfect now change, the original costuming. We had that, my scene partner, Rob Rosnowski. Really? With the sweater tied around the neck with the...

Oh, yeah. It's such a weird look. It's such an 80s thing. It is like that. It's like a yuppie tennis look. It's like James Spader in every movie he made in the 80s. White tube socks, white sneakers. White person. So, so white. Pink in the shower. Yeah, pink in the shower. But white outside the shower. Yes. So Rose is talking to herself and she's reassuring herself that she's fine. This happens every day. But then it escalates. Yeah, she's slowly backing up. And we can see what's going to happen a mile away. Right? I'm fine. I'm fine.

I'm just fine. There's nothing to be afraid of. These things happen every day. The main thing is nobody was hurt. We could have been here. They could have come in the middle of the night while we slept. They could have crept up on us and cut our throats. Now, look. Why?

What? I thought you were the killers. Relax, relax. I called the police. Dorothy's meat hook of a hand grasps her left shoulder. She screams. Dorothy screams. I said, Rose says, a full Patrick Hines and screams bloody murder. Rose says, I thought you were the killers. And Dorothy's just telling everyone to relax. She says she called the police. I'm like, fine. Did you run out of doorknobs to touch? And also, like, her private phone in the bedroom, not the yellow one we see every goddamn day in the kitchen.

I know. But yeah, she called the police. She tells us all that, you know, they stole her mink stole. And I have to say, this is another great joke that Stan gave it to her. It was the only present he ever gave her that didn't need an extension cord. It's funny because I've been thinking about Stan a lot in this episode. Do you love Stan? I kind of do love Stan, even though my father's name is Stan. Oh, have you ever thought of that? If you were with someone who had the name of your dad or your sibling? Let me tell you. Oh, yes, Stan. Oh, God.

Give it to me, Dan. Give it to me, Stan. Give it to me, Stanley. The thing is, I dodged a major bullet because my dad was Stanley III. It was a family name. And I'm the oldest boy. Oh, Stanley IV. And thank the Lord they did not give me that horrendous name unless your name is Stan and you're not my dad, in which case you're great. And I will fuck you. And I will fuck you. And scream your name. Give it to me, Stan!

Oh, my God. So let's see. Blanche enters. And again, this is so ridiculous. She says they got her jewels, but she's covered in flour in a really unrealistic way. I looked very closely and the handprints are on her breasts such that her arms would have had to be crossed or someone else applied it. I'm going with someone at the show. She's like, oh, my God, my jewels. My jewels. Okay.

And it's all over her face. Oh, this. Yes. It's so stupid. It's funny because like she does bewildered so well, you know? I agree. And she's saying like, she comes out saying, I got my jewels. But I see they didn't get your cocaine.

Oh my God, Blanche has cocaine? It's a great joke, Dorothy. Excellent joke, excellent joke. But Blanche explains it's flour because she hid her jewels in the flour. She didn't think that they would look there. And Dorothy, who seems to know every single thing about how robbers operate. That's right, called Dot. Called Dot. Says that the flour is the first place they look besides the freezer. That's right. And that's her other hiding place. Right. Oh my gosh. She goes on and on. You know, they'll never replace them. And then Dorothy has another zinger. She's like,

I'm just beside myself. And you ought to see the mess they made. I tore this place apart. They were probably looking for drugs. We have Maalox and estrogen. Now, how many junkies have gas and hot flashes?

And Jess, our sweet researcher, who's about 80 years younger than both of us, thought that we might not have ever heard of Maalox. And so he sent us a link to a Maalox commercial from the 80s, which is all about a family moving and the mom the entire time is trying to rescue a vase from falling off boxes.

Yeah. The vase symbolism is very prevalent throughout this episode. And listen, no offense to Maalox, but I take four Gaviscon tablets every night before bed for acid reflux. Oh. Because it affects you as a singer. Oh. Yeah. The body is fucked. Just let...

you know what? Just let her sing. You know what I mean? She's good at it. Just let her sing. So, Sophia ranters from the bedroom and this, and this also, this next section is from the opening credits, you know, she's a little pink sweater. The reason Sophia had to hightail it to the bedroom, she was the first one to break from the group. We're about to find out why. Yeah. Sophia had a plan. Well,

They cleaned me out, took everything I owned. All I have is what I have on. They took your clothes? My clothes, my shoes, girdle, everything. Thank God I'm insured. Ma, why in the world would they want your clothes? Who knows? Short girl robber, travels a lot, likes strip drive.

It's okay. I'm thrilled. I hated my clothes. I need new clothes. Sophia had to go to her room quickly to hide all of her clothes, to blame it on the robber so she could use insurance money to buy a new wardrobe. Yeah, kind of brilliant. Because she's a robber, essentially. 100%. And it's the first thing that comes to her in this moment. That's why she takes off. Yeah, not fear. She's just like, this is an opportunity. I know.

Listen, she's Italian from Brooklyn. So she says, maybe I buried them. And then Blanche is back to that goddamn vase. Yes. You know, she says, I can't understand why they didn't take my Chinese vase. And Sophia is all of us. She's like, who would want it? Once again, Blanche, you think that it would take four men to wrestle that thing out of your house?

Plus the ashes. Also, like, where did Blanche find it? What made her decide it was like a... It must have been on some trip with George. Totally. Like, it does not match with the decor of the house. Everything else in that house is wicker. And then there's this 800-pound Chinese cloth painted black. I know. But Rose is convinced this happened to them because they're without men. I don't know why this offends me to my core. What, like, I'm gonna... You think I'm taking a bullet for anybody, Jen? I do not. Maybe my daughter. Maybe my daughter.

Maybe. Maybe. If it was early in the morning and I've had my Dunkin', maybe my daughter. Otherwise, I'm the first one out of the room. Oh, I know. I know. But Dorothy, like, she literally does not understand the premise of the statement. She gives the most bewildered, what? What? Dorothy has not thought about a man since her husband left her. She's had to be very

self-sufficient. She has no need for them. Yeah, she goes on about that and then Blanche comes up with the idea that it's karma, that this is why this happened, that crime is caused by karma and that she certainly doesn't have the kind of energy that could have caused this. No, because her whole point is that like some people give out that kind of energy that attracts misfortune, but it definitely couldn't have been me. No, of course not. Susan Harris, where did you come up

with this. Don't even get me started on Susan Harris with this episode. I know. We'll get there. The other thing, too, is we haven't seen Blanche on camera in a minute. When it cuts back to her for the karma speech, she has more flour on her. Yeah, yeah. Like, her face is literally dripping in flour. Yeah, just the continuity problems all over the place. Yeah. So, Sophia announces that she has no energy. She's going to sleep. And I just said, like,

in the middle of this mess before the police are even there. Like, they've torn apart the living room. Blanche is going to tell us that the kitchen is a total disaster. I can't imagine what Sophia's room looks like. She doesn't care. She's going to sleep. No, she's going to sleep. She's me. She's exhausted. It's time for a nap. No, exactly. So we get a Dorothy monologue now about how, like,

She is offended by the idea that they were robbed because they don't have men. She says, we got robbed and now it's over. It has nothing to do with energy. It has nothing to do with being single. It has to do with a lousy lock on a sliding door and massive unemployment. I'm going to my room. Call me when the cops get here. And Rose, Rose chimes in and says, we're all employed, Dorothy, except your mother. I wouldn't call that massive. So this is my favorite moment of the entire episode. Bea Arthur says it's a masterclass in delivering a comedic line.

We're all employed, Dorothy, except your mother. I wouldn't call that massive. Good night, Rose. Go to sleep, sweetheart. Pray for brains.

As a matter of fact, I clocked this. There are so many darling sweethearts and honeys in this episode. Dorothy alone has seven honeys. Stop it. Seven honeys. I'm like, Susan Harris. I know. And that's what I was going to say about Susie Q. Yeah. So with all due respect to the creator of this most brilliant show, right? But Susie Q, you know, we know about her that she liked to write alone. Yeah. And didn't like her writer's room. That's right. And I'm like, you know, this is where I think a writer's room might have come in handy. There are so many things.

things in this episode. She's just like, this is great. And you're like, there's no one to go, um, girl. Hey, girl. Hey, girl. Hey, girl. It's funny because it would have been her in a room full of men. Like, there are so many men creatives on this show. I know. This should be completely run by women. But maybe, like, someone to be in there with her. Just to reel her in. A little. So Blanche is a wreck. This is where Blanche goes full unhinged. Remember, Blanche thinks it's only her that's been robbed.

Yeah. You know? I've been robbed. And she says, she's going to her room too. She promises this is not the end. She hates criminals. And someone is going to pay for this heinous crime. Now she's walking down the hallway to her bedroom. And at the mere thought of this, she turns around with her crazy blanch eyes. Remember season one, she's so skinny. There's not an ounce of fat in her face. Her eyes are wide like an owl. And she goes, we're going to have a good old fashioned hanging. And her eyes just light up at the idea. She goes, it's wrapped.

I hang it. Only first we'll have a whipping. Then we'll have a hang. Nobody takes my mama's jewels without swinging for it. Not a knot. Not a knot. This whole thing made me so uncomfortable, too. I know. It's just like, yeah, the good old days where we used to whip and hang people and she's from Georgia. I wonder what that means. I know. It's so fucked. It's so fucked. But also, may I remind you, this is the same woman who, quote, doesn't believe in hitting children. I know.

When her grandson came over. But this episode, she is off the rails. She's off the rails. And I'm just imagining Susan Harris alone in her bedroom wearing a blanched evening night set. Moo moo. Moo moo, drinking her wine, writing this scene, just laughing herself to death. The good old days. The good old days.

Christ. You said earlier, I think this is where a writer's room might have come in. I suppose there's so many of these moments. Let's just point them out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? If I had a whistle, I would do that. But anyway. Sorry, Susan. Do you see the blatant racism here? We're celebrating lynching. I don't understand, Susan. It's not that funny, girl. Yeah, it's not that funny. I want to point out, as all of the characters are exiting the living room, that Rose is like left sitting on the couch feeling very uncomfortable. Almost as if she's like,

This entire episode takes place in the living room. There's one quick scene in the kitchen and then a one quick scene on location that we will get to. Literally on location. Oh, my God. Knowing how to speak and understand a new language can be an invaluable tool when traveling, meeting new friends, or just even to master a new skill. But it's not always simple when you're bogged down by textbooks and structure classes.

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So it's the next scene. We're back in the living room. They've called a security system salesperson. That's right. And this salesperson is played by the actor named Christian Dayton Clemonson. I did a little deep dive on him. Tell me about Christian Dayton Clemonson. Okay, well, first of all, I like to call him the CDC. Ha ha ha!

So the CDC was born March 17th, 1958 in Iowa. He is well known for his portrayal of Jerry Hans Eppenson in the television series Boston Legal. And for this show, he did really well. He was nominated for three Emmy Awards. And he won in 2006 for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. Claps for that. No, guest actor means he's not making that much money, right? I will say this is one of those things where they have gotten around having you be a regular and recurring...

They can have you be a guest as long as they, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know if there's a cap on it now, but it's a way to, yeah, to pay less money. And it's the difference between like $5,000 an episode and $50,000 an episode, right? Essentially. Yeah. Or whatever you negotiate, but $20, $25, $30, $40, $50, yeah. Anyway, besides that, though, he was a real smarty pants. Oh, yeah. Yep. He went to two Ivy League schools. Whoa. Yeah. He did his undergrad at Harvard in 1980, and then he did his master's at the Yale School of Drama in 1984. Oh, my God.

And then he moved to L.A. Now, here's the fun fact. The Golden Girls we're seeing here, this was only his second credited role. Oh, my God. I thought he was really good in this, too. Yeah, he was really good. I thought he was really tone perfect, you know, very funny, but nerdy and really good. The hair really helps. His hair is something. It's like a ginger blowout. It's its own character. But he was also on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars in the film United 93. The 9-11 movie? Yeah, the 9-11 movie. And here's a true crime crossover for you. Oh, wow. In 2009, you...

He joined CSI Miami as the new medical examiner, Dr. Tom Lohman, which I've seen. So, yeah. And he's like creepy enough. They always portray the medical examiners in those shows to be just a little creepy. Yeah. Maybe I'm just thinking of his Bozo the Clown blowout from this episode. Maybe. Well, he certainly had less hair. Yeah.

for this because he appeared in the show's eighth, ninth, and tenth seasons. I'm glad to hear that he did so well. Recurring character, not guest star. Okay, so he's making that 30, 40 grand. But the last little true crime crossover I got to tell you about. In 2016, he played Deputy District Attorney William Hodgman in American Crime Story, The People vs. O.J. Simpson.

Oh, shit. Which I watch. You must have watched it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, let's go back and see him there. So thank you. Good job, CDC. Good job, CDC. Well, he in this is playing a sleazy salesman who's there to like scare the ladies into spending more money than they have. He says one out of every three people will be the victim of a violent crime. That's awesome.

Since there are four of you, at least one of you will be a victim of a violent crime. He's very funny in his pauses and his timing is very good. And then Rose chimes in to say she read that one out of three people will get cancer. So one of us is going to get cancer. So that takes care of two of us. Rose is hysterical. Hysterical. And Dorothy is like, knock it off. I know. Right?

Paul dot. And she's like, she basically says, all right, we'll take the basic security package. How much would that be? 600 bucks. Fine. We'll take it. Better than nothing, but not much. And Dorothy's like, well, what do you mean? And he's saying for 600 bucks, you get a siren that your neighbors ignore. And I'm like, that's actually true. Yeah.

You know what I mean? It is true. How many times do you hear like a car alarm go off that you walk right past it? No, it's true. If you want people to pay attention, you scream fire or 911, not help. And then he says with the deluxe system, you have an armed guard there within five minutes. I hate to tell you that's too much time. You know what I mean? Especially when we find out that that costs $10,000. Yeah. I looked,

this up. But I was kind of like, is this just like ridiculously inflated numbers for a TV show? And it kind of is. The best I could find was an article from 1985 from San Diego when California was dealing with like a rash of like serial killings from the Night Stalker. And so the security expert was saying that like business is booming.

Yeah. And he was saying like the most deluxe system that they sold was $5,000. So like the $10,000 is definitely an inflated number. But like people, when people are scared, they will pay any amount of money. That's why people also start buying guns, as we're about to see in this episode. Yes. And as we find out, he was trying to get them to spend more money. Yes. But our girl Blanche, Miss, you know, I don't believe in hitting children. She actually chimes in and says that she wants something that electrocutes an intruder. Yeah.

I love Blanche. I do too. In this moment, I love her. I'm reminded that like on many podcasts, you'll hear ads for SimpliSafe, which is a home security system, which we have. SimpliSafe has a feature now where the people monitoring your house can actually see into the house and yell at the robbers. Oh, I would love that. They can actually be like, hey! But that's the job I want. I know.

What would you say? I would say, listen, fucker. Is your name Stan? Get the fuck out of there. Can you imagine you're a robber and all of a sudden some like sexy voiced lady is screaming at you from like the other side of the wall?

You nailed it, Simply Safe. I'd pay 10 grand for that. So Dorothy's had enough of this and she says, okay, okay, we're getting the basic system. The salesman says, whatever. We love Dot. She's like, but not from you. Yes. From your competitor. Because what you were trying to do was terrify us into spending more money than we have. Now get out of here before the victim of violent crime in this house is you. Audience applause. Audience applause. I said, this speech is giving Julia Sugarbaker. Yes. You know. Another 80s favorite. I was thinking about Designing Women, how it comes after the Golden Girls, you know, like a year later or whatever. And it's

Famously, Julia Sugarbaker gives these just rolling monologues. That no one would sit through. No one would sit through. Yeah. So we're in the living room. You know, the salesman's been thrown out. They talk about how scared they all are. And I love moments like this because Dorothy says, look, we are all scared. It could be worse. We could be alone. We have each other. And that is one of the beauties of this show. Yeah. They don't have to be scared alone. They have each other. That's right. And they all hold hands except for Sophia, who refuses. Yeah.

Can we go back to some deep misogyny? Yeah.

Always. Where Rose is like, we're safer with men. And Dorothy's like trying to say that that's false security. That's right. This is where I was thinking about Stan, her husband. Because Rose's whole point here is that she felt safe with Charles. We haven't yet started calling him Charlie, as we will in subsequent seasons. Right, right, right. She's saying with Charles, I was never once robbed or murdered. Ha ha ha. And I think that like Dorothy's just not buying it. She's like, this is ridiculous. Like that's a false sense of security. And then I was thinking, well...

Here's the thing, Dorothy. Stan Zbornak was definitely the bastard who, if there was like a suspicious noise coming from downstairs, he's sending you to investigate. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I feel like Charles would actually be like, you stay here, honey. Hide in the closet. True. And then like get the gun and go downstairs and shoot the intruder. Stan is making her do it while he climbs out the window. But it's funny that like they're having a conversation that like they are speaking separately.

Yeah. Totally. Yeah.

It really makes sense. Right? So she's like, so with George, when I hear a noise, I'd wake him up. Then he'd take out his gun and then he'd have to find the bullets because I'd always hide the bullets. And then when he found the bullets, we'd make love. Right.

I know. So, because it makes me feel like I'd hear a noise, so was she faking hearing a noise? Right, but then also, like, that one time there actually is the Night Stalker downstairs and he's about to kill you both and you have to, like, find the bullets, fuck, and then he gets to go kill the guy? I just don't understand it. That's a lot of work being married to Blanche, I think. It's a lot. Blanche, honey, where are the bullets? This time I'm serious. Blanche, honey, where are the bullets? I'm serious. Where are the bullets, Blanche? There is actually a man down in the kitchen. Blanche, honey, put your lingerie back on. Wait, I love your George voice. Wait, wait.

We have to do something where you're, we have to write something where you're him and I'm her. And you're her. Get out of here. And then Sophia, as if she's talking to Susan Harris, she's like, boy, can you tell a story? She might as well have said, boy, can you write a story? Like, what the fuck did that mean? I know. I was so confused. I love that drunk Susan Harris alone in her room showing the script to nobody before the table read. It like only wrote 20 minutes. And at the table read, they're like, Susan, we need two more minutes. Can you give us a ridiculous Blanche story? That was it. That's what I was thinking of. Oh, really?

This is where a writer room would come in handy. Exactly. So Dorothy says, you know, she breaks this and says, I'm starved. Come on, let's make dinner. And Patrick, okay. Okay. Okay.

Susan, God damn it. So we have a dog bark. I'm starved. Come on, let's make dinner. Come on. Dinner. Oh, well, I'm not really all that hungry. I forgot all about him. Yeah, well, you go on in there. Getting a guard dog was your idea. All I have here is dog bark. Okay, the goddamn dog. So the goddamn dog didn't make a sound or an appearance with a stranger in the house, the salesperson.

Also, the sound effect sounds so canned. Yes, it sounds like a doorbell version of a dog barking. It does, but here's what I don't understand. Star Wars happened in 1977. But here on the Golden Girls, we just couldn't get a sound effect that sounded remotely real. I know.

I know. It drove me fucking crazy. You said we don't voice memo about it. Because we don't end here. Like what's coming up, I can't. But anyway, so take it away. I just, you go because I'm too mad. It sounds so fake that it feels like the security measure that they got was a fake dog barking. But no, you have to suspend all disbelief and believe that there is a huge,

huge dog that they've purchased and the dog is like living in the kitchen. So Dorothy is saying, Rose, you go in there and deal with the dog. Getting a guard dog was your idea. Rose won't do it because she hates big dogs because she was traumatized by being chased by a cocker spaniel when she was a kid. Pointed out that cocker spaniels aren't big, but they are to a three-year-old, says Rose. That's right. And it's all just ridiculous because they're like now they're trapped in the living room because this big dog that we never meet or see is in the kitchen. That's right. The dog stops barking and is totally silent for the rest of the

scene and I gotta tell you as a dog owner this never happens that's what I'm saying the dog is always barking or pooping no and we'll get there but like right now I'm like is it in a kennel is it in a cage like you know like what is happening because they have the rest of the scene where Rose is like let's go out to dinner my treat the dog is silent in the kitchen so finally Dorothy's like you know what look I'm gonna call the kennel to come get him yeah so she again goes to the bedroom to make her special phone call not the kitchen I just want to

I just wanted to point out, though, that Rose offers to take them out to dinner, her treat, and Dorothy says no because she wants to call the kennel. I said, did Dorothy just turn down a free meal? Because that doesn't seem like her. You know what I mean? She's a big girl. She needs her calories. I know. You know? But she did. She turned down a free meal. She turned down a free meal. So, again, Blanche, she's got a date tonight and no jewelry to wear. She's a some scum's woman. Scum. Scum.

Some scum's woman is wearing my mama's jewelry. Scum. And I want to point out, we're still in the living room. This entire episode so far has taken place in the living room. And here comes more racism. Here it comes. You have to take us through this because I don't even understand it. All right. So Susan Harris. Again. No writer's room for her. Nope. Let's skip it. Okay. I actually wrote here. Nope. Let's skip it.

Because Rose is wondering about the derivation of the word jewelry. And we'll just leave it at that. You can watch the episode if you want to know what she's wondering. And then you can think of us and Susan Harris's writing room that doesn't exist. I do think that Susan Harris would have benefited from a writing room. I'm pretty sure. So Sophia, once again, has something in store because she just jumps up and says, see ya, and walks into the kitchen, forgetting that the attack dog is in there. Blanche and Rose really...

run to the kitchen door. They do not go in there to try to save her. No. They're just screaming for Dorothy. Patrick, I have here this next section is insane. I hate it so much and I hate it for these actresses. They had to try to sell this. See ya. No! No! No! No! Oh, God, I don't know who to tell you. Oh, it's about your mother? Oh, my God, I'm a dog. I think he ate your mother. No! No!

Guard dog. My God, the dog. I think he ate your mother. What? Susan, put the Chardonnay away. Cork it. Cork it. Cork it. Cork it, Harris. Oh, God. Oh, my God. But Jess would be like, Dorothy's about to run in there and throw herself at the mercy of the dog. Sophia comes back out. She's eating crackers or whatever. She says, some attack dog. He hid under the table, peed on the floor, and then ran out the back. Again, the goddamn dog was free enough.

to run out of the house, but not to run through the swinging kitchen door. Exactly, to attack the strange man in the living room. And so I had here between this and the inappropriate Jewish jokes, I think we're getting a window into Susan Harris's I write alone oeuvre. Stop.

Jesus. Oh, my God. And sorry, folks. We do love this show. But if you are going to go back and revisit any show, there are beloved shows. I won't say any names, but there are shows written by and starring people we love that are 10 years ago. And you go back and watch them and you're like, how on earth did that make it onto air? Oh, and I've been in shows and, you know, I've had to sing things or do things. And now I'm like, I hate that that lives on forever. I know. Oh, God. I know.

So the next scene, guess where we are? We're in the living room. We're in the living room. Blanche is laying on the couch. I was, I had sprawled. She's legit sprawled. But you know why sprawled? Why? Because I was like laying, lying, lying. How do you spell it? How do you spell it? And I just went, fuck it, sprawled.

Having jumped, having plummeted. So we're in the living room. Blanche is sprawled. She's officially sprawled on the couch. Dorothy is applying compresses to her head. But she's wringing out washcloths from a wooden salad bowl. With no water in it. This much. I,

Was there even water? I had to look a second time. Like, it's a Victorian wash basin, and I'm looking closely. She puts it in, there's nothing, and there's finally, like, a drip. We need a conversation with props. I need props on the phone. We did, but here's the other thing. She's putting it on her forehead, not her eyes, which, when we find out what comes up, makes absolutely zero sense. You're absolutely right. And Blanche is just saying, I thought I was gonna die. I swear I have never felt such agony.

I saw my entire life flash before my eyes, and I thought, "What a shame if I die now. I'm too young."

And I'm wearing the wrong underwear. Dorothy putting up with Blanche's antics until she's had enough is like one of my favorite bits. Oh, of course. Blanche says, it'd be a shame if she died now. She's too young. Dorothy rolls her eyes. Then she says, and I'm wearing the wrong underwear. Dorothy throws herself on the coffee table. She's had it. Now Rose opens the front door. The alarm goes off. Blanche falls off the couch. Falls off the couch.

Rose turns off the alarm. I know, I know. Oh, I'm sorry. I just, it's just, I had to get in quickly because when I got out of the car, she says she noticed a swarthy man with a weapon. Dorothy, the protector, as we will call her henceforth, runs to the door and just shouts, oh, buenos dias, Fernando, and then turns back. It's the gardener trimming the hedge. Yes, exactly. So she goes on to explain, you know, I was running, he was blurred, and oh,

Oh, no. Blanche has been attacked. So Blanche explains that she went down to the police station to get an update on the case of the missing jewels. And she says to Rose, I borrowed your pocket hairspray. I took it from your dressing table. I love that all these ladies have dressing tables. And it's hard to believe that Blanche is plum out of hairspray. We've seen her dressing table. I know. I know.

We've also seen her hair. Well, yeah. She ran out. She uses it a lot. Because she says, you know what this humidity does to my hair? And Rose takes it to the camera. She turns and says, I know, cotton candy. And that's like the pot calling the kettle black, right? All of them. I mean, it's ridiculous. So Blanche says just as she entered the police station, she saw a cute officer standing there. He had his eye on me. Take to Dorothy, who gives a hard eye roll.

So I took out your hairspray and gave my hair a final spritz. Only surprise, it wasn't hairspray, it was mace. You had maced. Your hairspray was maced. I maced myself right-- I almost died. I fell to the floor, blinded, writhing in pain. Couldn't move for 20 minutes. But what do you know?

Rue McClanahan. Eddie Rue. Eddie Rue McClanahan is so good. She's so good at this. Can't you see her in that blue jumpsuit just thinking? I almost died. Fell to the floor, blinded, writhing in pain. Couldn't move for 20 minutes. And then Rose is like, oh, it works. And Blanche goes, Blanche goes, works? They thought I was on angel dust. Which is such an 80s reference. Yeah.

Oh, my God. I can see Blanche on the ground, her hands over her eyes. Oh, yeah. Rolling around. They wanted to arrest me. I'm lying. They're dying. And they're harassing me. Murderers are free. Rapists are free. But a poor widow on the floor, they try to lock up. Who'd I hurt? Me?

A poor widow on the floor. They try to lock her up. Murder is a freak. Rape is a freak. And if you see Dorothy, she's nodding and agreeing. She's rubbing Blanche's back.

A poor widow on the floor. They try to lock up. I was dying. Dying. Not since Dorothy squeezed her hand so hard that she fell to her knees have we seen such great, like, physical comedy. I'm dying. So Dorothy's like, now look, Rose, this is it. We've had it. She's got her finger in Rose's face. No mace. No tear gas. No grenades. And Rose says, and this is like the Susan Harris stroke of genius, I won't be needing mace. I just bought a gun. And...

Everybody in the audience, the whole audience. We've jumped the shark. I mean, Dorothy. You don't know how to use a gun. The man at the gun store taught me. In the basement, they've got a little shooting gallery, kind of like the ones at amusement parks. Except no prizes. And you shoot at little paper targets. This was mine. I mean, there are no holes in it.

I know. That's because they're all in your head. I'm sorry. Dorothy is losing her shit. And she's like, I cannot live in a house with a gun. What she's really saying is, I cannot live in a world where Rose Nyland has a gun. Correct. And of course, Blanche is like, Dorothy, don't overreact. Rose, good. You get a gun, you kill him. I know. Jesus. I know.

It's in one of these episodes. I think Blanche gets her car stolen later or something. They end up fighting the guy and they go to court and the guy gets a ticket. And Blanche is so upset. I just remember the attorney going, well, what did you want? The death sentence? And she's like, yes. But don't hit my grandson. Before I draw the line.

I just snorted so hard that it hurt. And you hit the wall. I know. Oh, but don't hit my grandson. I mean, I got to tell you, like, my sister is former military, 17 years. She has guns. I feel uncomfortable when I go sleep at her house. And I know there's... I know she's a very responsible gun owner. Right. I am not one of those screaming liberal, take the guns away. Almost none of us are. That's not what we want. We just want responsible gun control. But, like...

Guns in general, I've never held a gun. Right. I'm with Dorothy. Like, I don't want to sleep in a house with a gun. I'm with you. It depends on the gun owner for me to feel comfortable. And so Dorothy tells Rose it's gone too far. She should see someone. To which Blanche says... Dorothy, I don't think a date is necessarily the answer. And without skipping a beat, Dorothy turns around and says, I'm talking about a psychiatrist, hot pants. And here's another honey. Now, what do you say, Rose? Come on, honey. I know.

we'll all go. Yeah, I mean, had it happened to me, like, when you are robbed, it is a traumatizing thing. Like, you feel like your power is taken away. I think a little group therapy sesh would go a long way. That's what I'm saying. Dorothy is brilliant in this episode. She's tough. Yes. She's smart. She's assertive. And she's also really nurturing. But then,

something really weird happens. Okay. Because Rose is like, you think I'm crazy? And Dorothy's saying, no, I don't. I think you need help. And as Dorothy is saying this, the camera is zooming in between her and Rose to like a tight shot on Sophia's face. We've never seen camera work like this on this show before. And I'm like, what is this in

sane, slow zoom into Sophia who's standing behind the couch. She's not speaking. Right. Like the camera's zooming through the people who are talking. It finally stops on Sophia who says, you have nothing to fear but fear itself. And just eating all the time. She's eating her pretzel and then she goes, and of course, the bookie man. Da da da da da da da.

Outro music. Maybe that's why. They knew they were going to commercial break and they wanted to land a good one. What a weird way to shoot it. Yeah. Also, the deeper into this episode we get, the more I demand a writer's room. That's what I'm saying. I texted you the other day going, is this episode actually awful? Anyway.

I know.

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We're back from commercial. We're entering the house again from Cinderblock Alley. So far, we've been in the living room the entire time. That's right. We're back in the living room. Right. And this is after the gals, the girls, have been to see a psychiatrist. I gotta say, Blanche is leading the pack. She looks like a million dollars. She's wearing this like peach dress with like a shawl. She looks amazing. She looks amazing. She definitely got sexied up for the psychiatrist in case he was

Of course. You know? So Blanche is putting in the alarm code outside the house. We never see this alarm box ever again. That's right. After this episode, we go right back to no home security whatsoever. She really liked the psychiatrist. She thought he was very understanding. Sophia says, pay me $85. I'll be understanding. And you said she turned, because I have, as they entered the house, no one turns off the alarm. Am I mistaken? She, on the outside, she does the code on the outside. On the inside, I was like, has it not been left on? Yeah. I missed that. Hey, Eagle Eye, Patrick Hines. I know.

But Blanche, of course, is saying that she really liked the psychiatrist and she thinks he liked her too. And I just love that Dorothy is like, how can you tell Blanche? Because he kept saying, Blanche, how do you feel? I wanted to say, wouldn't you just like to know big boy? Ha ha ha!

So they enter the kitchen to drink orange juice, just in case you didn't remember we're in Florida. And I just want to say, like, all that bacteria in that open glass pitcher. Oh, yeah. And I'm so flummoxed by the crystal glasses placed on a restaurant serving tray. They just love to place things on...

I know. You know, on potholders. I know. Trays. So Blanche is saying it made her feel better. Dorothy says it made her feel better. Yeah, Rose does not feel better. No. And Rose makes an interesting point here that like not only does she not feel better, she feels worse because the psychiatrist was her like last line of defense of like fixing whatever is going on.

on with her. And now that that didn't happen, she just feels like she's going to be trapped in this anxiety tailspin for like the rest of her life. Right. So she says she's got to get some sleep. She has to get up soon. So good night, everybody. And then Dorothy looks at her watch and she's like, good night. Like we have a problem here. And what's happening is that Rose is sleeping during the day so she can make a pot of coffee and sit at the kitchen table with her gun all night like she's Aunt Ella or something. And I have here she probably places that pot of coffee on a

pot holder on the kitchen table. Totally. They love that. Yeah. Rose has really gone off the deep end here. So it's late at night and the house is dark and we hear a man's voice coming from Cinderblock Alley. It's also the music is very odd too. You know something's coming. I know because it's like we never get underscoring like in the scene. It's a dark room. We hear music before we hear anything else. What room is it? It's the

Yep.

I didn't shoot Lester. I'd rather you shot Lester. The very first time you see this, it's shocking. It is shocking. You know what I mean? It's a sitcom. Rose in a pink and floral bathrobe. Yes, of course. And it's a large gun. It's a big gun. And like, I mean, I know this is like a silly TV show, but like imagine how badly this could have gone. Like imagine if she had shot Blanche and Blanche would be so petite she would have died instantly. She was a mere inch from Blanche's handkerchief skirt. I know. I know.

I know. And Blanche is in shock and nobody does like shock better than Ruma Clamahan. So good. You shot my vibe. And Rose is frantically trying to explain. And Blanche goes, I'd rather you shot Lester.

And then doltish Lester. He decides not to take that nightcap after all. And Blanche says, go home, you old fool. Poor Lester. I do think that, like, Lester's got a little bit of responsibility here. Could you at least stay until the gun is out of Rose's hands? I would say yes until she said what she said.

I mean. The other thing, too, is that, like, a gun has been fired. We are at least 30 seconds after the gun has been fired. Dorothy and Sophia know where to be seen. I know. You know what I mean? And that's what I have here, too. Like, they saunter into the living room, essentially. I mean, they got to the living room faster when the grandson was playing loud music on a boombox. Dorothy comes in. What happened? Wearing, I have a yellow long nightgown over yellow pants. Just in case she gets hot. I know. It's like, it's a two for one. I know.

Miami, it's 99 degrees. 99 degrees. She's cold. A gun has been fired. And I love the way this is like, you see this in sitcoms all the time. People who don't know how to use guns try to take it from the other person. They use like the pointer finger and the thumb, which is exactly if I ever had to touch a gun, that's exactly how I would take it too. And Blanche is like, she shot my boss. Sophia, thank God I hated that thing.

But Dorothy grabs the gun and she's like, what are you doing shooting? Are you like, Dorothy loses her. This justifies every time Dorothy's ever screamed at Rose. Absolutely. And Rose is like, I heard a noise. I thought it was the robbers. Sophia. I managed to live 80, 81 years. I survived pneumonia, two operations, a stroke. One night I'll belch and stable Mabel here. I'll blow my head off.

Stable Mabel. Stable Mabel. So Dorothy, of course, is like, Rose, you've got to do something. This is crippling you. Blanche says, just save whatever pieces you find, Sophia. I can glue it back together. Sophia, you bet. Whatever I find, I love that vase. She's hiding pieces in the plant. But more importantly, Patrick, I have, why is 80-year-old Sophia on her knees? Oh.

Like put some back into it. Hey, Ma, put some back into it. I know. I know. What 80-year-old do you know is going to say, I'll do it? Let me get on my knees. Not my 55-year-old daughter, God forbid. I know.

I got it, Blanche. But like in Dorothy's defense, she's got to manage the situation. Everyone could be dead in seconds. You know what I mean? She's the only one who's got her wits about her. I know. It's wild. So Dorothy just says like, you got to do something. Life isn't worth living if you're going to do it with this kind of fear. And she's like, now, honey.

Right. There's another. I know. And she's like, you know, we were robbed. It's scary, but it happens. It's over. Rose, just like looking right into the Emmy voters faces. Yes, but I would say she'd lose for this. I have here and I hated it from the first time I saw Patrick. I said, I hate her voice here. I try to do it justice. It won't be as hopefully it'll be a simulation. But it's like it's like she's a child who almost talking on one breath. They're kind of hyperventilating. She's like, I know.

I know that. I know it's over, God, but not for me. For me, in my mind, they'll always be here. I hate it so much. In my mind, in my mind, I can't be. I just want to cry. What?

And I'm like, shut up, Betty White. I know. I know. But not here. But it is one of those things that like it stands out in the Golden Girls canon of terrible moments. It is. You know, you know what helps is Dorothy. Oh, honey. I know. I know. The back rubbing for Jesus in this episode. She's back rubbing everyone constantly. Rose has a gun. She could kill them all. I just.

thinking like substitute that's her summer job she's the nine foot tall soother oh my god oh here we go she's a tall disappointment she's a tall disappointment but she does rub the back of square jawed betty white

This is your moment. You ready? I mean, like we go to commercial. We come back. I've never in my life seen anything like we are on location. Right. Like this is not a soundstage. We are in a parking garage. And I did a little deep dive. Very mini. But the parking garage location is in the Sunset Gower Studios parking garage. OK. And so that's where they went.

what's going to happen here is she's going to be running away from somebody she thinks is trying to attack her. Right. Can you tell me what this day on set is like? An on-location day, like, what happens? So that day, there's probably, you know, there's a trailer, you know, they're going to go in and you'll notice that on set they've dressed the set so all the cars have Florida license plates. Oh,

Oh, yeah. And I will tell you this. One of the things I read about this is that the reason why the Golden Girls didn't do many location shoots is because they didn't want anyone saying, yeah, that's not Miami. That's Los Angeles. Oh, interesting. Because I am one of those bitches who lived in Los Angeles who's like, that's Los Angeles life. Now those are Los Angeles countries. You know, so but in this case, they dressed the set.

And here they are on location. It's like a steadicam operator. This is not a camera on a tripod. Like, basically, Rose is walking down the ramp like she's going to her car. The shot is her walking towards the camera, right? You hear the clack of her shoes and then you hear the clack of...

Right. And all of a sudden she realizes that somebody is like following her. So as she starts to go faster, this person starts to chase her. Now, as soon as the chase ensues, we are now behind her. Yeah. So the point of view is switched. I was like, please tell me this is a parody of some horror movie. Because it did. It looked like that scene in Bowfinger when they're filming a fake scene in a parking garage. Yes. But yeah, she says, oh, dear God. And you see Shaggy.

on the wall. She's running. There's like a kidnap van. She runs around. Down a level. Yes. And you hear the man go, hey, lady. So, you know, he really is giving chase. Lady, wait. And she's running downstairs. Now, she is 55 years old, this woman. She's losing steam. And you see the chaser gaining on her. And as she gets to the bottom of the stairs, she just stops. Right. And she looks behind her and she whimpers. She does. All you see of him is like from his knees to his shoulders. He's wearing like navy blue pants and a jacket. And she just, yeah, she turns around and shoots.

I was like, oh, no. Now, how long is this shoot day? Oh, a day. That takes a full day to shoot that 30 seconds. Yeah, because of the location. And it's the camera setups. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. So this scene stands out so much because it does not look like the show. Well, you told me. He texted me. Patrick texted me, Cheesecakes. And he was like, every time I watch this, I forget that we're on location. We're on location with the Golden Girls. It's like the love, but we're in Puerto Vallarta today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.

The Sunset Gower Studio parking garage. Oh my God. And so suddenly we're back at the house. No warning. We're on the lanai, which is how I have to say it. And not in the living room. Not in the living room. I know. Sophia and Dorothy are on the lanai playing Scrabble. And I'm thinking, why? This never goes well. You know this is just going to end in a fight. And they're in their usual sweater and tuxedo nightgown. Yes, at 4.30 in the afternoon. That's right.

And Sophia's counting up ostensibly her scores. She says three and one is four and 10 is 14 and a double letter score is 18, 19, 20, 23 and a triple word score makes a total of 69 points. 69 points. I win. And Dorothy's like, there is no such word as that. I thought we weren't going to get the word. We do get the word. There is no such word as that. There certainly is. Fine. I'll look it up. And if it isn't in the dictionary, I win. We don't have a dictionary. Yes, we do. Not anymore. The robbers took it.

They stole our dictionary? That's right. Too bad. Ma, "disdam" is not a word. You made it up. It's a word. Fine. Use it in a sentence.

You're no good at this damn game. I looked up the word disdam. I'm like, it's become like an urban dictionary legend. Oh, you're kidding. There's a whole Reddit thread about people who love this episode and use this word all the time because of this episode. Because of disdam. And you're right. The delivery is so good. And then she gets up and leaves. Yeah. And I will say this right after that. There's a knuckle chew. Yeah. You know? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Interestingly enough, there's a different hand chew in the credits. So it was a different take. Oh, right. So what they used for the opening credits didn't actually make it into the episode. Correct. So Blanche enters. She lets us know they caught the scum. Dorothy's very excited. Blanche's like, well, it's great for you. They found your stole. They didn't find my jewelry. And Dorothy says what?

Oh, honey. Right. I'm sorry. The shade of Blanche. She's like, well, the reason they didn't find my jewelry is because it's actually worth something. You can actually sell that saying that the stole is too ugly. Who would even want that? Who would want that? Who would want that thing? Nobody wears stoles anymore. Right. And she just says, my mama's jewels are out there on the black market being fondled by filth.

I can't wait to testify. I want to see those guys fry. Jesus Christ. But don't hit my grandson. But don't hit my grandson. Hitting kisses out of bounds. So stable Mabel enters. She says, well, everybody, you'll never guess what I did today. This is the weirdest thing because she's going to tell the story about the parking garage. But for some reason, Susan Harris needs us to know why Rose was in the parking garage in the first place. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Nobody cares.

She tells us, she's like, well, I was in the parking garage. Well, because I had to see the dentist because I lost my crown the other day. And Dorothy doesn't get impatient. Like I was just waiting. I was like, we need to know why. And I couldn't find parking on the street. Like, oh, no.

And it's like my hat fell off and then my nylons were ripped. Anyway. She tells the whole story about being chased. And when the guy grabbed her, remember, we don't know how that story ends. And she says, It was my nightmare come true. Someone was after me. I ran. He ran. I ran faster. He ran faster. He grabbed my arm and I turned around and

and dropped him. Kneed him right in his safe deposit box. Dropped him like a sack of potatoes. He lay on the ground and he was writhing and groaning and screaming in agony. And I stood over him and I looked at this pitiable creature and I thought,

I can take care of myself. I thought those were cute jokes, safe deposit box. Very cute. Yeah. But she's describing him like laying on the ground, writhing, screaming in agony. She's so proud of herself. She's like, I stood over him and I thought, I can take care of myself. I'm not helpless. I'm going to be okay. And here we have two honeys from both of them.

Blanche and Dorothy. Oh, honey, that's wonderful. Oh, honey, that's fantastic. And Blanche says, I have faith again. Kill the killers. Blanche! Jeez, this calls for champagne. I'll get it. Dorothy, oh, no, honey. So many honeys. There's none on ice. And I thought that was a strange detail because Blanche was like, oh, I'll put

them in the freezer. It'll be ready in 20 minutes. I'm like, the dialogue in this episode is so weird. No, there is a reason Blanche is going to put it in the freezer. Okay. We get this funny moment where Dorothy asks Rose if she's going to press charges and Rose says no, but he might. It turns out the guy was not trying to kill her. It was a parking attendant and she'd forgotten her keys. The poor guy got kneed in the Stanley's Born Act. That's right.

But, you know, she did say she's not afraid anymore. Thank goodness Rose seems to have overcome her fear. Because none of these things ever come back. So it's like Rose has to be cured of her anxiety within the 23 minutes. She has to get crippling anxiety, get a gun, almost murder Blanche in her own living room, and then be cured of the anxiety in 23 minutes. I get it, Susan. It's a tall order. And talk on one breath. I know.

Anyway, she knows she can take care of herself. Dorothy says, oh, honey. Oh, honey. I always knew you could. We have one more really frustrated Dorothy moment in the episode that I love because Blanche comes back in carrying a bag and she says, oh, damn, my jewelry. And Dorothy just screams at the top of her lungs. Damn. What? My jewelry. Oh, please, Blanche, enough with your jewelry. No, I found it.

And then I have here a real weak ending. I know.

If looks could kill, that's the look that Dorothy's giving Blanche. But what's weird is like, because Blanche says a beautiful stole, you can't replace it. They don't make them anymore. That's a pretty soft insult to end the episode on. And Dorothy's like, you. Right. It is a soft insult.

It's not a great ending. It's funny. I always think about how you said in one of our earlier episodes that the beginnings and the endings are the hardest. They are. And sometimes they get a real... Usually it's a Sophia joke to land on. Usually it's a good one. Yeah. But this one is... Literally, I kept looking at my script for today going, is that it? That's the end. Because the last line is, look here, dot, dot, dot. And we literally see Dorothy looking here. Oh, my God. Oh, that was great. Patrick...

I'm so happy. Cheesecakes, because you're in for a treat. The deep dive today is something that you have put a lot of work into. Why don't you tell us what it's about? I'm really passionate about this one, Cheesecakes. So this week, this very week, the week that this episode aired, the movie An Early Frost also aired. It was the first movie ever to deal with the subject of AIDS. And it came out this week, and it's really,

Really, really good movie. I just watched it on YouTube and I'm doing a whole deep dive on how it happened on, you know, the pushback that the network gave after they greenlit the thing, but then they made the mistake of hiring gay people to make it. So the gays were not taking any of the network's shenanigans. What was the name of it? Tell us again. An Early Frost. All right. An Early Frost coming at you real quick. Yep. So stay tuned. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

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All right, Cheesecakes and Jennifer Simard. This is my deep dive on the television movie An Early Frost. Wonderful. So An Early Frost premiered on November 11th, 1985. So just a few days after this episode of The Golden Girls. It was the first major film to tackle the subject of AIDS. It was viewed by 34 million households in its original airing. So it was the highest rated show of the night, even beating out Monday Night Football. Listen, I watched it. You did? You have to remember, I came of age at this.

time. I was a freshman in high school. Oh, my God. So you watched this when it came on? Yeah, we're sophomore. It was the fall of 85. Yeah. So yeah, no, I was a sophomore in high school. Wow. And we had assemblies at that time about AIDS. And so it was very scary. Yeah. Well, the fact that many people watched it, 34 million, beating Monday Night Football. I just wrote that. I think it tells us that the general public at large was very curious about HIV and AIDS and really wanted to be educated on whatever there was to know about the disease because there was

so much misinformation at the time and that was one of the reasons why they wanted to make the film was to sort of dispel the myths around it and i should say you can watch the movie on youtube that's where i found it you can watch the whole thing for free on youtube it's worth a watch it tells the story of 30 year old michael pearson played by a very young aiden quinn he's a successful chicago lawyer he has a longtime live-in partner named peter but michael is deeply closeted

Almost none of his friends know. He's like a workaholic and loves his job, but nobody knows he's gay, like outside of his relationship. And one day Michael gets a really bad cough. He goes to the doctor and learns that he has HIV. And then he learns from Peter, the boyfriend, that Peter has cheated on him. And this is likely how Michael contracted the disease because the two of them are very in love, but Michael's a workaholic. And like Peter went out one night and one thing led to another. And what I thought was really interesting, and I had to look this up separately, is that this woman,

all happened in 1985. Like, the movie came out in November, so this was obviously filmed before that. This was before there was a blood test. There wasn't a blood test to determine somebody's HIV status until March of 1985. The movie came out in November. So, like, I looked it up that before there was the blood test, how were they sure that people had it? And I learned that doctors back then would perform physical exams. They would ask patients

patients questions about their health and lifestyle. They would look for symptoms of acute HIV infection, which included fever, fatigue, swollen lymph nodes, sores on the skin or in the mouth, elevated white blood cell count, to name just a few. And so they would put it together and their best guess would be that you had HIV, which would develop into AIDS. So this

plot of the movie is Michael's got to go back to Michigan to tell his family both that he's gay and has AIDS. So he's not out to his family. His sister knew, but his parents didn't know. His grandmother didn't know. And the story really is about the family's reaction, but also Michael's treatment at the hospital, which is meant to shine a light on the discrimination people with AIDS were experiencing and also to answer questions and dispel dangerous myths and give some real information about the ways the disease is spread. So just to provide some context, here's a

very brief overview of the state of the AIDS epidemic in 1985. So Rock Hudson had died a little over a month before this movie premiered. So October 2nd, 1985, which that was really the catalyst that brought the disease front and center in the U.S. to sort of like the quote mainstream public. Is that how you found out about it? Well, I don't know if you remember this, but Rock Hudson guest starred on Dynasty. No. At this time. And he had a very famous kissing scene with Linda Evans.

So I do remember around this time, it was because of his fame. Yeah. I hate to say it, but the general, oh, it can affect us too-ness of it, you know, which is gross. But, you know, people started to, but I just saw him on my TV. Right. And, oh, that's B-Rock Hudson and da-da-da. He's a heartthrob. Right, right, right. And people...

didn't know that they were wondering, can you get it from a kiss? That's so interesting that you say that because that really plays into a moment in the movie that we'll get to. So by 1985, over 12,000 Americans had died from AIDS. In January of 1985, the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, reported that the number of new AIDS cases was increasing.

89% higher than 1984, and the CDC predicted that that number would double by 1986. That's how fast this disease was spreading. And again, it wasn't until March of 1985 that the FDA approved the first blood test to screen for HIV antibodies in the bloodstream, which is how

you know, doctors would then know definitively that people were HIV positive. So the origins of the film. So producers at NBC began kicking around the idea of a movie about the AIDS epidemic in 1983. So two years before. And really, 1983 was like just when people were really starting to understand what

what AIDS was. It had just the year before, like it actually was called something else. It was called GRID for gay-related immune deficiency. And then in 1982, they changed it to AIDS, which stands for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. So things were changing very fast. You can't talk about this without me hearing these lyrics in my head from 1981. Something bad is happening. Yes.

Something very bad is happening. Something that kills. Something immoral. Something so bad that words have lost their meaning. Is that Falsettos? Or later from 1991. When was that one? That was, that's Heather McRae. Yeah. That's Heather McRae. But In Trousers was 81. That's from Falsettoland. So that was later. I'm the worst gay when it comes to Falsettos because I don't know. Oh, but those lyrics anyway. And so in 1983, a playwright named Sherman Yellen was contacted and asked to write a screenplay

And he was straight and didn't know anybody personally affected by the disease. But he and his wife, interestingly, had recently taken a vacation to San Francisco where he describes literally seeing gay men dying of AIDS in the streets. And he agreed to write the screenplay because he felt that it was something that he could do to help.

But Yellen's screenplay doesn't get any traction and he like forgets that he ever even wrote it. He like wrote a draft, sent it to NBC. They kind of never got back to him and that was that. So two years later in 1985, the writing team of Ron Cowan and Daniel Lipman were brought in. Now Cowan and Lipman, this is really important. Cowan and Lipman were not just writing partners. They were real life romantic partners as well.

So bringing in two gay men to write a story about a gay man in the AIDS crisis was going to serve the project in a number of like really beneficial ways. I cannot imagine this project being written by a straight man. No offense, but especially in 1983, you know, all of these gay people who come onto the project know people who are affected by it. They are personally affected by it. So obviously that's going to add something to the storytelling. I would agree.

Yeah. So, for example, Cowan and Lipman say that right from the top, they had one condition for coming onto the project. The main character, Michael, can't die in the end. They said this can't end with his funeral. Now, my initial hearing of that took issue with it because I thought we were trying to do something realistic here. In 1985, there was no cure. There was no treatment. Now, there are people who are naturally immune to HIV. That is a proven fact.

It's a very 1% of the population or whatever. They do exist. But at the time, everybody who was contracting the virus was dying. Nobody was living. But what they were saying was what was more important at the time was to give hope because everybody was dying like left and right. It was so awful and black and dark and tragic that they were saying that like we have to give some kind of hope at the end of the movie so that it can't end with his funeral.

So, like, in the end of the movie, you know, it's about this guy, Michael, who goes home to tell his family that he's gay and that he has AIDS. And, you know, he's broken up with his partner because his partner cheated on him. And in the end, he, like, the final shot of the movie is him getting in a cab and going back to his partner and his life in Chicago. And it's kind of like, we don't really know what happens to Michael, but we don't watch him die, which was very important. And also, it should be noted that Cowan and Lipman, the writers of the movie, would go on to create the TV show's

Sisters, which was my favorite, favorite, favorite show. It came on right after the Golden Girls. I'm going to do a whole deep dial on Sisters because you can't find it anywhere. It's not on any streaming services. You can get the DVDs, but like who's got a DVD player? I love that your face is like a light bulb. Oh my God. I love it. So I love Sisters so, so much, but they

Also, Cowan and Lipman went on to create the American version of Queer as Folk. So these guys are really great. They really have spent their careers trying to tell gay stories. I love these guys. So when it came to finding a director for the movie, NBC originally wanted Paul Newman to direct it. Newman's agent made it very clear that he was not going to direct the film. But the agent suggested that producers go with another one of his clients, a guy named John Orwell.

ermine john ermine had been directing tv for years he was especially well known for having directed several episodes of roots so roots was like maybe the most famous tv miniseries of all time and ermine was like intimately involved in that but he was also a gay man which again would only serve to better the project and thank god he was there because these gay guys really drew like lines in the sand at really important moments and

John Ehrman would later say, and this is a quote,

So to be offered to direct the very, to be able to create some kind of art in the moment out of the thing, you know, you think about Larry Kramer creating The Normal Heart because like Larry Kramer wasn't trying to write a brilliant play. He was trying to tell the story of what was happening. Yeah. And the play The Inheritance that was here. Yes.

Matthew Lopez. Was it John Benjamin Hickey? Yes, John Benjamin Hickey. But his line was, there are no gay men my age. Yes, yes, exactly. I mean, look around. Like the Jerry Mitchells, the Harvey Fierstein, there are so few of them. Yeah. You know, I mean, and there's been so many articles written on this. Like we lost an entire generation of artists, of creators, of innovators. Like we lost, I can't imagine how the world would be different if we had all those people. So for casting, when it came to cast,

Yeah.

And he says it was a huge fight because the network NBC was really, really, really scared to make this movie. But in the end, he got his way. And so for the lead character, Michael, they cast Aidan Quinn. And they say when it came to casting that role, we have to remember it was a really different time. Because nowadays, if you're making a movie about like this, there's no way you would cast a straight actor in that role. But back then, there was no such thing as an out gay actor. And like, even if there was like a Harvey Fiers

who like everybody knew was gay but wasn't necessarily publicly out. There was no way the network was going to take a chance on somebody like that being their lead for this thing that they were taking a huge gamble on. That's a good point and really sad. Yeah. Well, we do know that many notable young actors for the time turned the world down, including Jeff Daniels, who was apparently the first choice.

But then a young, basically unknown actor named Aiden Quinn entered the mix. And he'd recently garnered attention for his role in Desperately Seeking Susan opposite Rosanna Arquette and Madonna. So he was kind of like the hot, young, new guy. And Aiden Quinn would later say in an oral history of the movie, he said, when I read the script, I immediately told my manager at the time that I didn't care about negotiations or money. I wanted to do this.

So John Ehrman, the director...

desperately wanted Aiden Quinn to do the role, but the network wanted Aiden Quinn to screen test. But John Ehrman was afraid that he was like so new and rough around the edges that his screen test wouldn't go well. So he went to the network and said that Aiden Quinn categorically refuses to do a screen test. But I promise you he's brilliant. And the network like gave some pushback, but eventually they were like, fine, whatever. And Aiden Quinn didn't know that until he read the oral history and he was like, what? I never would have said, but it all worked out. Aiden Quinn is so...

so, so, so good in the movie. The cast is rounded out with Gina Rollins as the mom, Ben Gazzara as the dad, and Sylvia Sidney as the grandmother. Now, Sylvia Sidney, I looked her up, she had this, like, 50-year golden era of Hollywood career. But, like, I know her best as...

as I think her character's name was Juno. She was like the caseworker on the other side in Beetlejuice. She was the one that would smoke and the smoke would come out her neck. So she's amazing and there's a great story with her here. So as the script was coming together in pre-production, the director and the writers, remember the three gay men, they insisted on scientific originality.

So doctors knew very little about the disease back then. And an interesting tidbit, the writers have said that the name of the disease changed over the course of the writing of the film, which I looked it up and the timeline doesn't quite work. That actually, it went from being called GRID in 1982 to AIDS in 1982. They were writing the screenplay in like 1984, 1985, but they were telling this like 30, 40 years later, whatever it was. And I think that they just gay men living through this time, like what the point of that story is just to say, nobody knew anything. Everything was changed.

changing. And one of the things that was really important to them was to have the most up-to-the-date, most current scientific information when writing the screenplay. Well, and if you need a parallel to look at, look at COVID and the pandemic and how in real time, look at all our friends that passed away, like how they were treating it when they didn't even know how to treat it. And we later found out we're treating...

things incorrectly. Yes, and making people sicker. Making people sicker. And that was the case with HIV and AIDS too. Like a lot of the early treatments either did nothing and the side effects were so awful to people that it made them die faster. So, you know, further to the authenticity of the movie, a medical specialist was hired as a consultant and director John Ehrman took Aidan Quinn and the writers to hospitals to meet AIDS patients in the end stages of life.

And this had a really profound impact on everyone involved. Writer Daniel Lippman would later say, and this is a quote, we saw nurses coming in all dressed up with masks and gloves and leaving food trays by the door because they wouldn't go into the room. Like we show in the movie, they do. That's a big part of the movie. He says, it seems unbelievable now, but everything in an early frost happened. Paramedics did refuse to take patients with AIDS. And that's another scene in the movie where he's having convulsions at his parents' house. And the parents tell the paramedics that he...

has AIDS and they literally put him down and they refuse to take him and the dad has to like get him in the car and drive him to the hospital himself while he's having a seizure this is shit that really happened when people would oh now I'm gonna cry I know when people would die in the hospitals and their bodies weren't claimed they would put them in trash bags and put them in the dumpster behind the hospital these are real things that happened

people were ostracized. Even gay people were ostracized by other gay people who were terrified to be around them. Like people were just dying left and right and nobody knew anything. And because this was in the beginning largely happening to gay people, there wasn't funding. The president would refuse to even talk about it. There's a famous press conference from the White House briefing room where a reporter asked the press secretary about AIDS and the press secretary is like, I don't have it. Do you have it? And everyone in the room laughs. It's

awful. So all of this stuff was real and it really happened. But the research wasn't all death and doom and gloom. So Aidan Quinn has this great story about attending group therapy sessions for people with AIDS. And he would later talk about how much he laughed in these group therapy sessions. This is a quote. He says, "...the amount of Black humor that came out of those sessions and the amount of soulfulness. And I thought, my God, these men, these were primarily young men, had wisdom way beyond their years about life because of the situations they were in."

And you see this reflected in the movie as well. There's a character named Victor played by the amazing Broadway actor John Glover. I mean, do you know John Glover? I got to meet him because of One More Time. I've been a fan of his for years. He wasn't in it. He played the narrator at one point in the process. So he came to see our show three to five times. And he loves to bake and he would bring us baked cookies.

goods and nothing can prepare you for getting a friend request on Instagram from John Glover. John Glover was like famously in Love, Valor, Compassion of a famous gay play where he played gay twins. And I think that's what he won his Tony Award for. He's incredible. And he's incredible in this movie because the character Victor, like you can see these group therapy sessions recreated in the film. You can see what an impression it made on the filmmakers because it's a big part of the film. And John Glover's character is very,

very much at the end stages of his life. He dies in the course of the storytelling. But, you know, when Aidan Quinn's character goes to the hospital for his complications and John Glover's like his fairy godmother and the black humor and the dark humor and like learning to laugh and learning to like experience like every moment, even if it's your last moments. And he's just he's

So, so, so good in it. And you can see what an impact these group therapy sessions had. I made a note here that I grew up in the gay community. My mom's a lesbian. And I like there were so many men like Victor in my mom's life. I knew my mom had so many friends who died of AIDS. I knew them all. I mean, I was young. I was probably 9, 10, 11. But I could like see the faces of these men who remind me so much of this Victor character. These like flamboyantly queenie gay men who are, you know, they're angry, but they're doing the best they can to just like get through the day. Like I knew these guys.

So, you know, it was a very real moment for me in the movie as well. So now we've got to talk about standards and practices, which, as the writers say, are basically the censors at the network. These are like people who are the like, you got to get the script through these people before it can go into production. We learned that an early Frost went through 14 rounds of rewrites before the script was finally approved. And.

And the people from Standards and Practices were on set every single day. It was a short filming process. It only filmed for 20 days, but they were on set every single day. And according to the writers Cowan and Lipman, their main Standards and Practices guy was a former Catholic priest named Frank.

And despite what you might think, both Cowan and Lippman describe Frank as like being a really great guy, but they also sort of describe it as having Stockholm syndrome, where you kind of like, where the prisoners grow to love their captors, you know? So the standards and practices people had some very straight up directives. So number one, they did not want the film to condone homosexuality. Think about it.

that. Though we're making a film to show the humanity of the people living and dying from AIDS, they did not want to condone homosexuality. So there's a scene where Aiden Quinn's boyfriend comes to visit and the grandmother later says to the Aiden Quinn character, I like your boyfriend. Standards and practices insisted that that scene be cut because they saw it as a condoning of homosexuality. Okay.

They also didn't want Aiden Quinn's character and the boyfriend character to touch ever. They wanted no touching ever. There's a scene where the two have a fight and then they go for a walk to work it out. And at the end of the scene, Aiden Quinn puts his arm around the boyfriend's neck, like the way like a brother, like the way that anybody might. And standards and practices fought to have that scene cut and they lost. And there is definitely touching. I mean, like there are things

that I even noticed that I thought were big for the time. Like, when we see Aiden Quinn and his boyfriend in the opening scene, like, they're waking up in the same bedroom. Like, Aiden Quinn is in bed and the boyfriend comes in to wake him up and, like, it's clear that they share a bed. Like, these are definitely things that were, no, people hadn't seen on TV or in the movies before. So, like, the movie definitely did push the envelope, but they fought for every last thing possible.

on that front. And they say one of the biggest conflicts on the set was over a scene where the grandmother tells the Aiden Quinn character to give her a kiss. So this made me think of what you were saying with the... Rob Hudson and Linda Evans, yeah. So they say the censors went absolutely ballistic over this because of the fear of a person with AIDS planting like a tiny little smooch on an elderly person. And this became such a big deal that production called the head of the Centers for Disease Control to make sure that that would be safe

in real life, which is wild to me because one of the main objectives of the film was to dispel misinformation, like the idea that AIDS can be transmitted through casual touch. But anyway, the actress playing the grandmother, Sylvia Sidney, who was a bit of a legend, as I mentioned, told the producers, if I don't kiss the kid, I walk. See, you need people to do that. You need people to draw the line in the sand. And I think it was FDR was presented all these great programs, right, for the New Deal or whatever. He's like, yep, these are all great. Now make me. Right.

Like you have to force policy to happen. Yes, exactly. And it's kind of like, why else are we doing this? The whole point of making this movie is to dispel these dangerous, untrue myths. So they said the biggest fight on the set was over the idea that the producers wanted the boyfriend, Peter, the one who presumably Ayn Quinn's character contracted the disease from, they wanted him to be the film's villain. Right.

And for director John Irwin, he said this was the last straw. He said he went to production and said if they persisted on this, he was going to take it to the press. And that there was no way he would portray that relationship in anything other than a positive way. And the executive backed off the idea but remained on set to make sure there was no physical contact between the characters. You know, like, can you imagine it? Yes.

And I wanted to say here, I wanted to point out, I just like a few weeks ago watched the Showtime original series, Fellow Travelers, about gays in the 1950s and 60s with Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey. There is so much pornographic level gay sex, like pornographic.

so much raunchy, dirty, porno-style gay sex that I couldn't watch it on the airplane. I was too embarrassed to watch it around other people. So I'm just saying, it's only... How far we've come. How far we've come. Remember the Ellen DeGeneres kiss? Yes. Oh my God, with Laura Dern? Yes. How about...

The Roseanne kiss. Yeah. You know, like these were like, oh, yeah, I know. In 1994, in 1997 or whatever the fuck it was. I know. Jesus. Well, listen to this. So when the film was finally done and ready to be screened by NBC executives, director John Irwin, he says he like steeled himself for the screening. He says, but at the end of the screening, Bob White, the head of movies at NBC said, and I quote, don't anybody touch this. It's fine just the way it is. Leave it

alone. Oh, that's good. So critics at large were less receptive. Irwin tells the story about screening the movie in New York for some critics here. He describes them as conservative and coming from right-leaning publications. He says they hated the movie and made a lot of derogatory comments. Sylvia Sidney was at the screening and at the press conference afterward, and she literally stood up and said, what the hell is wrong with you? I've been in this business for over 50 years, and this film is the most beautiful film I've ever made. Mm-hmm.

Sylvia Sidney is not taking anybody's shit. I love her. She's the best. Then all the top advertisers pulled out. So NBC estimated they lost half a million dollars in revenue, which is $1.4 million in 2024 money. The only advertiser to remain was, wait for it, the King James Bible.

So imagine you're watching this movie about the gays and AIDS and smack in the middle, you get just an ad for the King James Bible. Like what a message, right? Exactly. Exactly. So despite all of this, an early frost with a huge ratings hit drawing one third of the total TV viewing public that night. Imagine that one third of all the people watching TV in the United States that night watched that movie. And the reviews once it aired were mostly very good. The Washington Post called it nearly perfect. But the

This is from the New York Times. It says, Right? Yeah. An early frost was nominated for 14 Emmy Awards, including Direction...

The acting nominations went to Sylvia Sidney, John Glover, Gina Rollins, Aidan Quinn, and Ben Gazzara. And it won four Emmys, including editing, sound mixing, cinematography, and writing for Ron Cohen and Dan Lipman. And it's gone down in history as like a very significant first. You can watch it on YouTube. I highly recommend it. It holds up. It's really, really good. Good job. I'm very moved listening to this. Thank you for listening to my deep dive on an early frost. I was so happy to get to do it. You're welcome. I'm going to take credit.

for my listing skills. I tied on my cap. Tied it tight. Didn't you learn a lot? I did learn a lot. You can go watch the movie on YouTube. The whole thing is there in its entirety. And Cheesecakes, thanks again for joining us on this epic adventure. Before we go, let me just beg you, please keep those Apple Podcasts and Spotify reviews coming. It's important if you're going to do it, just click on that little thing that says write a review and then write like a second.

sentence about what you like about the show. Yeah, it doesn't have to be long, long with a hard G. But it really does help us, you know, and all podcasters. This is this is the thing that really helps people find us. It really helps people find us. It helps people decide if they want to listen to us. And I'm reading them all. And you're all so sweet and lovely and nice. So thank

you. Yeah. And if you have any info you'd like to share with us, write us at info at goldengirlsdeepdive.com and join our Facebook group. Patrick, what's our Facebook group? It's the Golden Girls Deep Dive Podcast Discussion Group. I'm saying it because Jen can't ever remember it because why would she be able to remember it because it's such a ridiculously long name. But you know what? Just to make it up to you, you know what I'm going to ask the cheesecakes to do? What, girl? I'm going to thank you for being a friend by telling a friend about our podcast.

It really doesn't get old. I really love it. That is almost as clunky as the Golden Girls Deep Dive podcast discussion group. Do you know what I mean? Every week I'm trying to pass the ball to you. I'm like, what is it? Is it podcast or discussion? Which comes first? Oh, we love you, Cheesecakes. And we'll see you next week. Bye, Papa. Bye, Mother. Bye, Cheesecakes. Bye, Cheesecakes.